Tuesday, January 7, 2014

The Costa Book Awards honour some of the most outstanding books of the year written by authors based in the UK and Ireland. There are five categories - First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book - with one of the five winners chosen as Book of the Year, announced at an awards ceremony in London every January.

Launched in 1971 as the Whitbread Literary Awards, they became the Whitbread Book Awards in 1985, with Costa taking over in 2006.
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From the Telegraph, accessed 1/7/14
Winners have been named in the five Costa Book Awards categories, the Telegraph reported. Each author receives £5,000 (US$8,202) and is now eligible for the £30,000 Costa Book of the Year prize, which will be announced later this month.

2013 Costa category winners are:
Novel: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
First novel: The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer
Biography: The Pike by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Poetry: Drysalter by Michael Symmons Roberts
Children's: Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse by Chris Riddell
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Category winners for the 2010 Costa Book Awards, which honor books by writers in the U.K. and Ireland, include:

Novel: The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
First novel: Witness the Night by Kishwar Desai
Biography: The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
Poetry: Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott --Winner!
Children's book: Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace

Costa Biography Award
* The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius by Graham Farmelo --Winner!
* The Music Room by William Fiennes
* Coda by Simon Gray
* Dancing to the Precipice by Caroline Moorehead

Costa Poetry Award

* Angels Over Elsinore by Clive James
* One Eye'd Leigh by Katharine Kilalea
* Darwin: A Life in Poems by Ruth Padel
* A Scattering by Christopher Reid -- Winner, Costa Book of the Year

Since 1965 the PNBA [accessed 1/7/14] has presented annual awards to recognize excellence in writing from the Pacific Northwest. Rather than soliciting nominations for specific categories, we simply require that the author and/or illustrator reside within the PNBA region (Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Montana, Idaho and British Columbia), and that the book be published within the current calendar year. In addition, nominations may be submitted for special awards honoring efforts in publishing, illustration or for a body of work. Special awards are determined at the discretion of PNBA's Awards Committee.

2014 Pacific Northwest Book Awards Winners:

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (Viking)
The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of an Underground America by Langdon Cook (Ballantine)
We Live in Water: Stories by Jess Walter (Harper Perennial)
Anatomy of Melancholy and Other Poems by Robert Wrigley (Penguin Books)
Dream Animals: A Bedtime Journey by Emily Winfield Martin (Random House)
The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme by Joe Sacco (Norton)

2012 Winners:
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt (Ecco)
Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle by Thor Hanson (Basic Books)
Habibi by Craig Thompson (Pantheon)
The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch (Hawthorne Books)
West of Here by Jonathan Evison (Algonquin Books)
Shards by Ismet Prcic (Black Cat)

2011 Winners:
The Lonely Polygamist: A Novel by Brady Udall (Norton)
Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes (Atlantic Monthly/El León Literary Arts)
Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr (Scribner)
River House: A Memoir by Sarahlee Lawrence (Tin House Books)

2011 Shortlist
The Atlas of Love by Laurie Frankel (St. Martin's)
The Clearing by Heather Davis (Graphia Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
A Common Pornography: A Memoir by Kevin Sampsell (Harper Perennial)
The Fences Between Us by Kirby Larson (Scholastic Press)Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco
Heartbroke Bay: A Novel by Lynn D'Urso (Berkley)
Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride (Holt)
The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground by Jeffrey Ostler (Viking)
Lean on Pete by Willy Vlautin (Harper Perennial)
The Lonely Polygamist: A Novel by Brady Udall --Winner!
Mariposa Road: The First Butterfly Big Year by Robert Michael Pyle (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes --Winner!
Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr --Winner!
Nashville Chrome by Rick Bass (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
River House: A Memoir by Sarahlee Lawrence --Winner!
Shell Games: Rogues, Smugglers, and the Hunt for Nature's Bounty by Craig Welch (Morrow)
Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter's Civil Rights Journey by Ana Maria Spagna
What We Are: A Novel by Peter Nathaniel Malae (Grove Press)
Work Song by Ivan Doig (Riverhead)

PNBA 2010 Book Award Winners
Winners of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association's 2010 Book Awards, which were selected from more than 200 nominated titles by Northwest authors and published in 2009, are:

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt & the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan
The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest by Jack Nisbet
Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (Tor)
The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha (Broadway)
All in a Day by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Nikki McClure

Wild Beauty: Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, 1867-1957 by Terry Toedtemeier

American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon by Steven Rinella

Dave Boling. Guernica

2008 Award Winners:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

Dancing with Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's by Lauren Kessler

Returning to Earth by Jim Harrison

The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle

Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff

2007 Award Winners
Long Journey: Contemporary Northwest Poets by David Biespiel
Whistling Season by Ivan Doig
God Laughs and Plays by David James Duncan
Gemini Summer by Iain Lawrence
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time
Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

2006 Award Winners:
Six titles have won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association's 40th annual Book Awards, which recognize "exceptional books written by Northwest authors." The association's award committee of independent booksellers from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska selected the titles. The winners will be celebrated at a banquet Friday, March 17, at the PNBA's spring trade show in Seattle.

The Language of Baklava: A Memoir by Diana Abu-Jaber of Portland, Ore., and Miami, Fla.
Rogue River Journal: A Winter Alone by John Daniel of Elmira, Ore.The Highest Tide: A Novel by Jim Lynch of Olympia, Wash.
How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets by Garth Stein of Seattle, Wash.
William Stafford Memorial Poetry Award: Approximately Paradise by Floyd Skloot of Amity, Ore.

Children's Book Award: Hotel Deep: Light Verse from Dark Water by Kurt Cyrus of Eugene, Ore.